Last weekend I headed home for my four day Easter break before the start of revision. During my time off, I was randomly browsing Facebook (well, what else is there to do when you're not studying?) when an advert for a rally across Europe popped up at the side of the screen. This got me investigating just how feasible it would be for me to get involved with something like this.
The whole idea of a rally through Europe is to drive your car from home to an end location in Europe across a very short time span, from a weekend to a week. For example, one rally started in France and ended in Italy, driving through several countries along the way. During your trip, you participate in challenges such as wearing fancy dress every day of the event or decorating your car. While this isn't a race, you are able to score points for participating in the challenges and at the end of it all there's the potential to win prize money. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to me!
Most of the places I looked at asked you to buy a car for £200-300, or use a car over 20 years old. As we have the trusty Range Rover classic and my awesome Series III Land Rover, the car would be theoretically sorted. So, this would leave me to raise money for entry fees (around £200), fuel (gas for the Rangey, so we'd probably take this car as gas is a hell of a lot cheaper than petrol) and accommodation (apparently around £30-40 a night, depending on where you want to stay). While this probably isn't possible for me to do myself, I got thinking about doing the rally for charity, and getting sponsorship for the event, and should I win any prize money it would go to charity.
In terms of what charity I'd support, the choice for me is simple. If you're not already aware of it, I have a massive interest in neuropsychology and I'm currently studying towards a BSc in psychology and ultimately want a PhD and research career in neuropsychology. As I'm nowhere near patient enough to wait before working in the field, I also volunteer for Headway, a brain injury charity. This charity aims to provide support for people who have sustained an acquired brain injury of some form. I've been volunteering for Headway for around 6 months now, and I've really noticed how much of a difference the charity makes to the clients. So, if I were to rally across Europe I'd be donating my money to these amazing people.
I'm not able to do an event like this in 2012, however I'm looking towards doing something like this either in summer 2013 or 2014. Of course, I wouldn't be doing this on my own, and I'd be taking my Dad along with me, as well as anyone else I could persuade to join me. Now, I'll get to the point: There's no way I can afford this on my own, and if I'm to raise enough money for Headway I need sponsors! If I've sent you the link to this blog, you're either someone who's really interested in motorsport, or someone I consider kind and loving and caring and stuff. So, if you'd be willing to sponsor me for this event - or if you know of anyone else who would - please leave a comment on here or get in touch with me via Twitter. I'm not asking for money right now, I just want to test the waters to see who'd like to sponsor me for something like this. If there's enough interest, then I'll get planning! I'll keep you all updated as to how it's all going, and thanks for reading!
